


three weeks

by tarquin



Category: Rooster Teeth Productions RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 03:50:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarquin/pseuds/tarquin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three weeks. Three weeks shouldn’t carve a pit in his chest or drop a weight in his stomach. Three weeks shouldn’t make him feel empty and misguided, and they shouldn’t make him feel so present and alone.</p>
<p>The words, on their own, should have no effect on his mood and he shouldn’t sour when he says them, like they’re a curse or a slur.</p>
<p>Three weeks until Gavin gets home. </p>
<p>Starting tomorrow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three weeks

Three weeks. Three weeks shouldn’t carve a pit in his chest or drop a weight in his stomach. Three weeks shouldn’t make him feel empty and misguided, and they shouldn’t make him feel so present and alone.

The words, on their own, should have no effect on his mood and he shouldn’t sour when he says them, like they’re a curse or a slur.

Three weeks until Gavin gets home. 

Starting tomorrow.

Maybe if Michael had been aware that the absence of a boy to his right would leave him tetchy and lost, he might have done more than go out with him for drinks the night before he left. Appreciating Gavin’s existence is a haughty order for him but he does his best while they sit opposite each other at a booth, trading jabs and eye rolls. There are other people there with them, friends and co-workers, but they hardly notice.

Michael teases Gavin about the event the boy will be working at in Europe. He wishes him all the crowded booths and hand cramps the universe can offer him, and in return Gavin sends a special prayer that someone leaves an unopened drink next to his x-box at home. They call each other motherfuckers and assholes between drinks and bouts of laughter.

At some point someone tries to get a word in edgewise between the two of about the proper spelling of the word ‘colonel’. That person is met with blank stares and eyes so distanced from them that they almost feel the need to reintroduce themselves to the pair of friends, currently inhabiting their own tiny world.

But Gavin has a flight to catch and doesn’t want to be hung over on the flight, so he calls the night early. He slaps a hand on Michael’s back as he makes for the exit, and Michael turns and tells the back of Gavin’s head that he’ll see it later.

Had he been informed that Gavin was a staple in his life now, one whose absence would erode a hole in the fabric of his being while being an ocean away, Michael might have made the moment count a little more.

 

It starts to nag at him early, when Michael gets home later that night. No Gavin, three weeks. It really should sound like a dream come true.

He falls asleep feeling strange and hollow.

+x+x+

The next day at work, the silence is an earsplitting reminder that there’s no Brit in the office. The other guys show that he’s gone in little ways too, the way they have headphones around their necks instead of on their ears, and when they chat and banter back and forth there’s no chiming in from the peanut gallery. It’s like a deafening crash in Michael’s ears, so unused to the lack of chattering next to him. The constant squeaks and grumbles that make up his daily soundtrack are gone, and while he knows he should be celebrating that he can’t help but be annoyed by their lack of existence.

Sometimes Ray laughs at a post on twitter, Jack and Geoff record stuff behind him and it makes up a cardboard diagram of their daily life. It sucks. 

A little after noon, Michael finds something terrible on youtube and swivels automatically to his right to present it to his partner in crime. But he swivels his screen in the direction of a closed door and he feels hot and dumb when there’s no one there to balk at his joke.

Half an hour before his day ends there’s a loud hum from his pocket, and Michael checks his phone to see a photo message from Gavin, making that awful stupid face he makes every chance he gets.

It makes Michael’s chest feel warm and his fingers stop tapping his leg, and he sends Gavin back a stupider picture with his glasses off and his eyes crossed.

It’s the most right things have felt all day.

 

The next day Michael turns to Gavin three more times out of habit, and by the fourth time a small cuss hits open air, and Ray is snorting behind him. Swiveling back to his own screen with burning ears Michael pays him no mind, but somehow his mood sours even further, knowing others can see how Gavin’s absence is gnawing at him.

Michael shrugs off the incident as a one time thing and Ray prods at him for a little longer before something new gains his attention. Not long after that, there’s a nasty picture on Michael’s desktop involving one of Gavin’s favorite cars and one of his least favorite angles of the male genitalia. When Michael’s heels dig into carpet to turn to where Gavin should be, he catches himself. His stomach twists.

The routine of it all is so good, the disturbance of it is jarring. Gavin not being there to widen his eyes and gasp ‘Oh, G-, Michael!’ is like a blow to the chest, and Michael hates it. He hates it because he even cares at all, and he knows full well that if Ray or Geoff or Jack were gone, yeah, he’d miss them, but not like this.

Michael sends the picture to Gavin over Snapchat. His response is a text that just says ‘Disgusting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’

Michael’s laugh is barking and rapid-fire and immensely relieved. 

But there’s no escaping the fact that the rest of the week exists, and seems to do so only to remind Michael that Gavin isn’t there, and that he cares. As if not having him where he belongs isn’t irritating enough, this new fact, that it matters whether or not Gavin is within shouting range, is a completely new weight all together. And honestly the weight in his stomach meshes nicely with the hollow of his chest, and Michael hates these metaphors most of all because they’re about Gavin of all people, and he cannot wait until he gets back.

 

+x+x+

Somehow Michael manages to crawl through the rest of the week without making a fool of himself in the office or calling Gavin to ask him to say something stupid, just to make things feel right. He spends the weekend at home, where Gavin isn’t a prerequisite, and does his best not to sulk or over think things. Sulk, because the convention is now over and the staffers who went with Gavin will be home Monday, but the Brit stayed behind to visit family and shoot Slo Mo Guys.

And overthink, because he’s never felt this way before and it’s freaking him the hell out.

Gavin’s a bother, an asshole, and his nose takes up 200 percent of his face. He’s stupid and grating and it’s mindboggling to Michael how thinking about all of this just makes his stomach clench as he stares at the ceiling, willing the boy home. 

Michael thinks himself to sleep that night, telling himself that he just misses him, that he’s over thinking it, and once Gavin gets home he’ll be wishing the boy back to Europe on a slow moving canoe.

He knows he’s lying to himself and it’s awful.

 

5 am on Monday Michael receives a text from a boy who doesn’t bother to calculate time differences. Not bothering to don his glasses he stares blurrily at the screen until Gavin’s name clears the barrier of his mind. Half awake and pissed, Michael sends him a text detailing exactly what time it is in America, as well as the ways in which Gavin can go fuck himself for waking him up that early. He doesn’t notice how the words he sends are automatic and comfortable and he falls back asleep before he can register that this is the guy he’s been having an existential crisis about for the past week.

Gavin responds ten minutes later, just long enough for Michael to slip back into dreaming. The text reads: “:-)” and Michael sends him back that he hates him most of all.

When Michael gets to work four hours later he stares at the texts, befuddled by the way they make him smile. Anyone else and these would be deleted, forgotten. But he reads over them four times at least, and they brighten his mood as he spends half an hour editing a video they shot two weeks ago, where Gavin spent two hours following Michael around in a video game, accidentally shooting him several times in the back. These too give him that warm feeling and bitter aftertaste. 

When he finishes editing the video he changes the background on Gavin’s desktop to a picture of a very unflattering photo taken underneath a male horse.

He wants him to come home.

 

The second week goes smoother than the first, now that Gavin’s lack of being is less surprising. Michael still misses him but he gets used to the silence, and he doesn’t find himself daydreaming as much. When he does lapse into thought he still stares intently at the spot where Gavin’s chair will usually be, (Stolen away by someone else for menial purposes, of course. Will probably be returned with several screws missing.) but he gets snapped out of it by an opening door or someone calling him back to attention.

He still does feel like there’s something missing. A distinct lacking in his life that makes work less fun and cuts his nights out drinking with friends short, but it’s not an insufferable pain.

By the second Friday Gavin is away Michael’s just beginning to tell himself that he had overreacted, that the feelings didn’t run as deep as he worried they did and that he’s in the clear, as far as that idiot who sits next to him is concerned.

Two minutes later Gavin uploads a photo on twitter of himself from the con, wrapped around a pretty cosplayer who clings to him like she needs him to breathe.

She’s grinning and close to him and Gavin’s eyes are glowing because of how her chest is pushed up against him. The instant need to tell himself that he doesn’t care colliding with the fact that he fucking cares a lot feels like a car crash in his head. Michael excuses himself from the office to go get a drink of water.

He guzzles his water and removes his glasses, rubbing listlessly at the bridge of his nose.

Maybe it’s time to admit that there’s a problem.

+x+x+

Week 3 comes, and with it there is a new adversary to face. Namely, the I Apparently Have Feelings (??!) For The British Prick At My Office And He’ll Be Back Soon- What The Shit Do I Do. Rolling listlessly back and forth in the office, Michael jokingly tells himself to google it, or to say it up front, or to ask someone for advice. But he knows he’ll do none of those things, because a world in which Michael Jones admits to not only missing, but possibly liking Gavin Free more than he likes normal people isn’t a world he can see himself inhabiting. 

So instead he panics on it. He thinks about it more than he thinks about work or groceries or bills, and more of his deaths in the games he plays are attributed to the thought of Gavin being next to him again, trading jabs and calling him a paff (?) than ever before.

It doesn’t help that it’s a slow week so time seems to inch by, but the tedium of seeing Gavin again makes the days go too fast too. Gavin will get in on a Saturday night, and by the time Friday rolls around Michael is just as stuck as he’d been the night Gavin had left.

Michael decides his game plan is this:

When Gavin gets in on Monday, act like it’s no big deal. Don’t jump guns, don’t pursue. Never ever admit to the warmth in his gut that Gavin causes and definitely don’t act like he’s anything more than his good bro. Never say a word about feelings or ‘more than friends’ and pussy out forever goddamn. 

Michael wants Gavin home more than anything in the fucking world and he’s terrified of seeing him again.

 

Monday comes though, as it usually does, and Michael toes the line between that excited and that terrified. He makes coffee and takes a shower and bemoans the fact that he can’t do one menial action without thinking about how soon he’ll have Gavin back on his shoulder, squawking like a parrot and grating his nerves and being a fantastically awful human being.

He panders around the apartment, looking for time to kill for a while before he gives in and starts on the 5 minute hike to work. 

He’s not the first one there but he’s early, and when he walks in he can see that the Achievement Hunter door is still shut. He hadn’t thought to check the cars in the lot and there’s no way to know if Gavin’s in or not. He feels that queasy nervous excitement thrum through him as he twists the handle, but the room is empty.

And it’s kind of nice, the way his stomach drops when he’s not faced with the three week absent problem he’s been obsessing over. It’s a nice kind of conformation, that he really is sad that Gavin isn’t there yet, and that he will be soon. It also stands as a reminder that those feelings are absolutely real and present, but that can wait.

It’s been three weeks, and Michael still misses him madly.

Michael is so absorbed in thought that he fails to hear the footsteps behind him. He doesn’t hear how they pick up speed and by the time he hears the yelp from behind him, there’s already a weight on his back and a pair of skinny arms winding around his neck.

Another car wreck of interests meet in Michael’s mind, as instinct and habit tell him to twist the boy from him and toss him on the floor. But there’s also that want there, the one Michael had never consciously felt, where he wants to feel the heat from Gavin’s body close to him, wants to smell his cologne and soap and where he doesn’t want Gavin to be gone again.

Usually he can do these things in tandem, but not now. Not after Gavin’s been gone for so long and all Michael wants to do is have him again. Michael freezes, shifting weight so he’s leaning against the doorway, Gavin clinging to him. He utters a laughing ‘fuck’ and braces himself, but goes no further.

But Gavin doesn’t do his part either. Where the boy should be clambering on him, getting footprints on his shirt and pulling him to the ground, Gavin’s frozen. His arms stop being jittery and he stops being completely excitable, instead settling onto Michael’s body. Hands wrapped tight around his chest, chin resting atop Michael’s head, he relaxes and doesn’t move, and for the first time Michael wonders if Gavin’s had the same kind of problem he’d been facing for the past weeks.

Neither of them move for a heartbeat, and then Gavin’s arms wrap tighter around him. When he speaks his voice is tight, worried, and exhausted.

“I missed you Michael.”

Michael, for what feels like the first time in forever, lets out a slow exhale. He smiles, swallowing the chuckle that wants to tumble out of his chest, along with his breakfast and twenty one days worth of stress. A second later he’ll throw Gavin off his back. He’ll call him a dumbass and he’ll spend the day rolling his eyes at Gavin’s comments and asking him why he sucks. He’ll do it with a grin on his face and Gavin will respond the same. The worry, the tedium, the fear, all of that will be gone because Gavin is back. It will be normal, it will be good. Maybe better than that.

But for now Michael pauses for a second longer. His knees tremble under their combined weight.

“Missed you too Gavin.”

**Author's Note:**

> written in just under two hours listening to santa monica by theory of a deadman on repeat
> 
> so
> 
> my finest work, obviously


End file.
